Note that the public release will be in 2 weeks. You can also skip the waiting time by buying Star Knightess Aura on itch.

Ding ding ding ding dinnnng!!!!! It was a pretty close call and I was not sure if I could get everything done (I may or may not have had no time at all to test the world state correctness after completing Eternal Day of Sloth :'D) but the 0.24.0 release got pretty much finished. And with it, I finally completed the last outstanding items towards the big milestone to the 50% mark ---- most importantly, as I mentioned in the above note, I finished the Eternal Day of Sloth quest (among other things). With this you can now complete all 3 post-Festival main quests and we are ready to go forward into the second half of the game.

Besides that, there's of course a lot of other stuff that happened this month! Let's start the update post with the usual numbers! We have 2 new H-CGs, 3 new corruption scenes, 3 new mental changes, 1 new quest, the completion of the Eternal Day of Sloth quest, 2 new boss fights, 1 new passive, and couple of other things such as new skills and important new items. And then of course, this is also the major rollout of the new UI, which patrons who have played the prereleases probably have tried out.

I already posted this one a couple of times, but I think the Status menu is probably the best in terms of aesthetics so I think it should definitely get its spot in the post announcing the major update with the UI release. For more details on this topic, for those who are new or maybe didn't follow the development so closely, I recommend checking out the devlog posts.

Do butterflies poop rainbows?

Then, in terms of main story, Aura is finally allowed to face off with Belphegor. I had some crazy inception like ideas with sub-battles in mind but ended up going with a "regular" battle. Pretty much like the whole of Mountainreach this just had to be downscaled. In hinsight I feel like this entire arc could be expanded into into its own game had I implemented everything I wrote down in my design document. There are still some twists here that I don't want to spoil and of course in traditional Star Knightess Aura fashion, you are probably going to die. I can guarantee that the fight is winnable, however, it took me all of Monday and using every single resource at my disposal to win. 

Besides the main quest, we also have a new side quest "The Lord of Phantoms", which completes the Nephlune Underground content by allowing Aura to finally enter the Domain in the Nephlune Vault.

On the corruption side, there isn't a lot of new content, nontheless, there is some! Add a new mental change that affects Aura's reaction when Womb of Lust triggers her to perform a lewd action in Roya. Insert the Lewd Knowledge Orb for a new masturbation scene and to start Aura down the road to porn. And finally, you can trigger the 50% mark mental change that synchronizes the Make-Over Storyline with the Delinquency Storyline, creating the storypoint from which we can in the future start the Bullying Storyline. 

Other than these main points, we also have a bunch of minor stuff. The new Humanitas Rune you can obtain from fighting the Phantom Lord and which offers a new interaction with James and after defeating Belphegor and saving Elaine, you will gain access to her skills, one of them being the new very powerful, very costful to learn Light Enhancement spell Radiance. I'm curious how its downside of increased detectability will turn out, though.

And I think that pretty much covers it. As I mentioned above, more information on the individual additions can also be found in the weekly devlog posts. A little note to the "Remote Save Directory" option (got added last prelease), this has been disabled in this build as I deemed it too experimental. So if you turned it on, please turn it off before upgrading!

As a conclusion to this post, have the full changelog below. Usually I would post-process the bug report section. For example put all the tickets related to UI into one ticket since it only affected the prereleases. Same story for other things, but to kind of motivate the next goal a bit further, I decided to leave the bug report list largely unedited, which may be a bit less useful to the reader, but it demonstrates well why a dedicated Assisstant Developer is the next order to business. 

Changelog 0.24.0 (28.10.2022)

• Integrated Hermit 2 H-CGs
• Integrated Hermit 3 H-CGs
• Added scene "Tests Are Out 5" 
• Added scene "Tutored By George 1"
• Added scene "Homework Project With Laura 3"
• Added lewd scene "Aura Masturbating 3"
• Added mental change "Masturbation Is Not Enough."
• Added mental change for inserting Lewd Knowledge Orb
• Added mental change "Competitive over Appearance instead Grades"
• Added quest "The Lord of Phantoms"
• Finished quest "Eternal Day of Sloth"
• Added boss Belphegor 
• Added boss Phantom Lord 
• Addd Central Lake and Destroyed Mountainreach maps
• Integrated first round of UI overhaul
• Added Load option to Message Command
• Added item Humanitas Rune
• Addded item Corrupted Humanitas Rune
• Added skill Radiance I
• Added skill Fade Into Shadows I
• Added passive "Lack Of Willpower To Study"
• Scripted learning Radiance and Fade Into Shadows from Elaine
• Scripted option to give Humanitas Rune to James
• Moved end of content points at Verdeaux and the Captain
• Employed "+1 POWER" keyword for "+1 Damage per ATK/MATK"
• Added H-CG unlock option for Deluxe Build
• Increased max mental changes to 95 
• Increased max killed bosses to 69

Balancing

• Added additional -10 Max MP effect when legs of sloth is completed
• Replaced Corruption increase every day with Doubled Curse effects for Hard Mode

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos
• Fixed character shadow not loading initially in "about status" option
• Fixed main menu hotkeys enabled during message box scene
• Fixed page button appearance criteria
• Fixed missing jump point in Phantom Lord Domain
• Fixed crash from pressing hotkey when menu is open
• Fixed backlogs not truncating for save files created before the message system plugin was added
• Fixed passability issues in Central Lake
• Fixed filename typo in party member bar background
• Fixed picking up Caritas Rune setting triggerLewdScene flag
• Fixed incorrect web bomb stock after Festival
• Fixed James dialogue inconsistencies
• Fixed hp/mp potentially exceeding max hp / max hp due to variable influences on passive effects 
• Fixed map WP gauge not showing correct percentage
• Fixed slowdown issues with HUD
• Fixed flickering on HUD party frames 
• Fixed HUD briefly appearing on Recall 
• Fixed Desmond getting added to party when viewing Hermit events in recollection mode 
• Fixed Drug Dealer using Prepare Bloodshot Eyes twice in a row
• Fixed Nail opacity in Aura Masturbating 3 being 0
• Fixed duplication of state icons
• Fixed glitchy behavior due to arrowkey and message command window interactions
• Fixed touch input for loading autosave
• Fixed mobile title menu command placements
• Fixed letter spacings
• Fixed Olaf Duel having no Gold payout
• Fixed missing Paul to Paulina portrait change at the end of What Lurks Within The Mountains quest
• Fixed compendium list offset bug
• Fixed incorrect setting of George and Rose meetup recollection crystal
• Fixed input interruption on message skip 
• Fixed compendium not being closeable via mouse/touch 
• Fixed malformed JSON in Graviton Rule and Breath of The Dragon JSON 
• Fixed calculation errors in Eyes of Greed/Arms of Wrath/Legs of Sloth
• Fixed incorrect compendium icons displayed 
• Fixed incorrect MATK icon for Flaming Robe 
• Fixed minor text inconsistencies at compendium 
• Fixed scrolling opening the back log 
• Fixed broken quitting game on mobile 
• Fixed various minor glitches 

Stats

• Estimated play time: 21-27h
• Word Count: 412k
• Lewd Scenes: 53
• Real World Scenes: 159
• CGs: 24 (+1 Bonus CG)